Avoidance always backfires.
We know this in our bones. When we put off that hard conversation with a partner or friend, we know the tension will continue to grow. Or the project we keep pushing to tomorrow turns into a panic that leaves us exhausted and ashamed. We see it in the friend who avoids dating after one bad breakup and years later wonders why he feels alone.
We avoid more than we’d care to admit. And even though we know how much avoidance costs us, our fear proves stronger.
And our fear runs deeper than the current situation we’re avoiding.
What we’re really afraid of? That we will feel shame, that we’re not good enough, not lovable, not strong enough to handle what comes next. Essentially, we’re afraid that everything we’ve worried is true about us will be confirmed. That deeper terror of being exposed as flawed or powerless is what keeps us plugging our ears. So we distract, we numb, we build little walls of busyness or avoidance. And for a while it works. Until it doesn’t.
Common Ways We Avoid
Avoidance shows up in sneaky, everyday patterns that feel harmless in the moment. We tell ourselves we are just being practical or giving ourselves a break, yet each choice quietly strengthens the fear we are trying to escape. Here are some of the most common ways it plays out.
1. Procrastinating
You know the project, the email, or the decision that has been sitting on your to-do list for weeks. Instead of tackling it, you open another tab, answer easier messages, or suddenly remember you need to reorganize the fridge. The longer you wait, the bigger the task grows in your mind until the dread itself becomes the reason you keep delaying. What starts as “I’ll do it tomorrow” turns into months of low-level anxiety and self-criticism.
2. Dodging Hard Conversations
That talk with your partner about feeling disconnected, the feedback you owe a colleague, or the boundary you need to set with family. You rehearse it in your head a hundred times but never say the words out loud. You change the subject, send a vague text instead, or simply stay silent hoping the issue will fade. Inside you feel the knot tighten because you know the longer you wait, the more shame you will feel when the truth finally comes out.
3. Passive Aggression
Passive aggression is avoidance of your own anger. When we don’t confront our feelings of anger, we find ways to suppress the energy. Yet we know it doesn’t really go away. The anger comes out sideways in a surprising comment we make, a criticism, a biting word or action that causes us and others more harm. Instead of confronting our anger, we avoid it, and our bodies and our relationships bear the cost.
4. Numbing Out with Screens, Food, or Substances
When the discomfort rises, many of us reach for the quickest escape. Endless scrolling, another episode, a glass of wine, or comfort food that dulls the edge for a few hours. These habits do not feel like avoidance at first; they feel like self-care. Yet each time we numb, we teach our nervous system that the feeling underneath is too dangerous to face directly. The cold finds us anyway, usually in the form of exhaustion, disconnection, or that hollow sense that life is passing us by.
5. Filling Every Hour with Busyness
Some of us avoid by staying perpetually busy. Meetings, errands, side projects, helping everyone else; anything to keep the mind occupied so there is never a quiet moment to feel the fear. The calendar looks impressive, but inside you sense the emptiness. The strategy works until the exhaustion catches up and the original fear is still waiting, louder than before.
This avoidance strategy can come up as OCD or an eating disorder as well. These repetitive, ritualistic behaviors are often an unconscious attempt to keep a larger feeling outside of awareness.
Right now, we can hold space for empathy for all the human ways all of us live in fear of shame. They are our best attempts to protect ourselves from the terror of feeling powerless. The problem is they keep the fear in charge.
Wim Hof Reminds us to Confront our Fear
Wim Hof echoes this same wisdom: We are afraid of the cold. We are afraid of stepping into something that could overwhelm us, take us down, make us feel small and powerless. The ice bath looks like punishment. The first thirty seconds feel like betrayal by your own nervous system.
Yet here is his blunt reminder: if you don’t find the cold, the cold will find you. Life is painful. Discomfort is unavoidable. It is all around us, that raw feeling of powerlessness. And if our strategy is avoidance, if we keep creating walls, distracting ourselves, procrastinating, or reaching for the drink, the screen, the escape, then we will always live in fear. We will never actually grow. We will live shivering in the cold.
What “Finding the Cold” Really Means
So what does Wim Hof really mean when he tells us to “find the cold”? He is pointing to the truth that the growth we want – the peace, the maturity, the closeness to ourselves and others – is found only through confronting the cold, the very thing that scares us. But there are two very different ways this confrontation can happen.
The Harmful Way: Repetition Compulsion Keeps Us Stuck
The first way is unconscious repetition. We keep placing ourselves in harm’s way without realizing it, replaying the same old wounds.
Ronald Fairbairn, the Scottish psychoanalyst, described this as repetition compulsion. When we are unconscious of our pain, we tend to gravitate toward the same patterns we grew up with. The person who grew up with criticism finds themselves in relationships that echo that criticism. The one who learned early that emotions lead to abandonment keeps choosing partners who disappear at the first sign of need. A panic attack, a PTSD flashback, an outburst of anger, or a cycle of self-sabotage… all of these can become unconscious ways we end up re-experiencing the original hurt.
We feel powerless again and the cycle confirms the old belief: The world is a cold place, I’m small and afraid, and I need to avoid the pain.
The Conscious Way: Supported Courage Opens the Door
The second way is a conscious, careful, and supported move toward the “cold”. You decide to find the cold on your terms. You gather the support you need, the skills you need, the people you need, and you move back toward the thing that scares you. This is the path that actually changes everything.
This idea is so core to human experience that it shows up everywhere in our stories:
- In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker does not become a Jedi by hiding from his father’s darkness. He has to face it, but only after years of training and with the guidance of Obi-Wan and Yoda holding the space for him.
- Frodo does not destroy the ring by running from it; he walks straight into Mordor, but he never walks alone. Sam, Gandalf, and the fellowship are the support that makes the impossible journey possible.
- The Buddha sits under the Bodhi tree and faces Mara’s armies of fear and doubt, yet he does so only when grounded in the earth.
- Jesus willfully journeys toward the cross, having received the words: “This is my son, with whom I am well pleased”.
These stories remind us that the hero’s journey has always required both the courage to move toward the fear and the presence of something or someone that keeps us from being overwhelmed by the pain.
Depth Therapy is Exposure Therapy
Depth therapy is about this exact same process. When someone reaches out for help, they sense there is something they need to confront. In the beginning they feel ambivalent, scared, protective. We spend the early time simply exploring all the ways they have tried to move away from it, cope with it, keep it at arm’s length. We get curious about it together, because that avoidance has been their best attempt at staying safe.
When they enter therapy something shifts
Yet something shifts when they start to feel the support they need from the therapist. Slowly, almost without noticing at first, they start intuitively moving toward the things that scare them: the terror of commitment, the dread of failure, the shame of being seen as needy, the fear of abandonment, the embarrassment of speaking their truth. They dip into the “cold” deliberately, with care, and with someone right there who is not going anywhere.
They finally find the parts of themselves they’ve needed
And when they do, the experience is remarkably like the elation of stepping out of an ice bath. At first, there is the initial shock, the intensity, the urge to run. Then, if they stay with it and the support holds, something remarkable happens: They emerge with a flush of energy, a wave of love for themselves, a surge of self-compassion, and a deep sense of peace. A new space opens up. They realize they are okay. They are loved and supported, and not afraid in the way they once were. The fear did not disappear, but it stopped defining them. What used to feel like a threat now feels like a part of them that can be held.
As someone who has sat with people through this process for years, I see the same pattern again and again. Heinz Kohut taught us that we all need “selfobjects”: a way of telling ourselves, “I’m surrounded by all the support I need”. When that attuned support is there, the disconnected, avoided parts of ourselves can finally be felt and integrated instead of repeated.
The cold, in other words, stops being the enemy. It becomes the doorway to the self we’ve wanted to be.
| Path | How It Happens | Support Level | Outcome | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unconscious Repetition | Automatic, driven by old wounds | Low or none | Cycle repeats, exhaustion deepens | Staying in critical relationships |
| Conscious, Supported | Deliberate choice with help | High | Energy, self-compassion, freedom | Facing shame in therapy |
Your Next Step Is Waiting
If any of this resonates, if you have been feeling the cold find you in ways that leave you exhausted, consider this your invitation. You do not have to do it alone. Whether that looks like trying a supported Wim Hof practice with a group or coach, picking up a book that speaks to your particular fear, or reaching out for depth therapy where someone will walk beside you, the support is available. The moment you decide to find the cold consciously, with care and with company, everything begins to change. You already know the old way. The new way is waiting. Take one small step toward it today. You might be surprised by how alive you feel on the other side.